In 1977 Roberto Rossellini devoted his last film to the opening of the Centre Pompidou. In limbo for 40 years, the film is now being unveiled at La Ferme du Buisson. In it Rossellini approaches the museum in a way no one else ever has, catching spectators' stunned amazement on the spot. In photos and videos we discover the extraordinary adventure of the shooting, while contemporary artists offer their personal visions of the museum and its history.

In 1977, the Centre Pompidou opened, offering the public its first taste of Contemporary art. Roberto Rossellini devoted his last film to this historic moment. In doing so he testified to the advent of a new artistic, architectural and cultural modernity. With a camera constantly on the move and an amazing system of hidden microphones, he filmed the museum in a way nobody else ever has. He died in Rome on June 3rd 1977, a month after finalising the film.

Unknown to the public at large, this remarkable work has been made the beating heart of the exhibition. It is accompanied by hitherto unshown archival material from Genesium Foundation and producer and comrade in arms Jacques Grandclaude: a step by step video montage of the director at work, extract from 11 hours, 2500 photographs of the shoot, and hours of sync rushes recorded with Rossellini’s hidden microphones.

This immersive experience of the Centre Pompidou’s first days is revisited here in a film specially made for the exhibition, in which Marie Auvity gets the original crew to talk about the making of the Rossellini film and its relationship with the Pompidou’s creative spirit. Out of this remarkable collection of material arises the issue of how we see the museum and what it produces: its mix of democratisation and mass culture, and the invention of a new kind of visitor, a new form of museography and a new relationship with society. What kind of memory lives on in museums, and what projections, critiques and reshapings is it subject to?

In response to Rossellini’s objective approach, works from the Centre Pompidou provide resolutely subjective artistic visions. When the Italian was filming, Brion Gysin was investing his photographs of the facade with his hallucinations; and Gordon Matta Clark had already used the building site for Conical Intersect, his most famous social and architectural work. When the Italian was filming, Melvin Moti was being born, and thirty years later he came up with No Show, a recreation of a guided tour of a museum containing no artworks. A "performance" made, he said, for the future: "a future we’re not even ready for yet." Just as, at the time, we weren’t ready for those baffling objects, the Centre Pompidou and Rossellini’s film.

Centre Pompidou's 40th anniversary

In 2017, the Centre Pompidou is celebrating its 40th anniversary throughout France. To share the celebration with a wider audience, it will be presenting a completely new programme of exhibitions, outstanding loans and various events throughout the year.

SeventySeven - The project

To keep visitors on their toes and ideas on the move, the three art centres will be displaying works created or acquired in 1977, works by artists born in 1977, and works focusing on the museum and its history. The project takes a look at a specific vision of art and society, a crucial utopic impulse that still fuels contemporary creativity. This reassessment forty years down the track brings an understanding of the museum’s active role in history as a force for conservation but also for shaping a future.

Saturday 3 June 2017

This second edition sees the performance festival broadening its scope. As part of the Centre Pompidou 40th anniversary celebrations, it is spreading out through the Ferme du Buisson and into partner venues. The core idea is "the museum performed", with artists invited to come up with performances, talks, guided tours, concerts and experiments with artworks involving histories of museums and collections.